I hate word prolems so much,
But math is only useful for solving word problems!
and I can't figure this one out for my life. Here it is. A family buys airline tickets online. Each ticket costs $167. The family buys travel insurance with each ticket that costs $19 per ticket. The Web site charges a fee of $16 for the entire purchase. The family is charged a total of $1132. How many tickets did the family buy. I need a "let" statement. (Let x = ) and an equation. Please help!
To find out what to let x be, look at the question at the end:
How many tickets did the family buy
So you let x be the answer, or
Let x = how many tickets the family bought.
Each ticket costs $167
1. The family bought x tickets, so we multiply $167 by x and get $167x
for the cost of all x tickets.
The family buys travel insurance with each ticket that costs $19 per ticket.
2. The family bought x tickets, so we multiply $19 by x and get $19x
for the total cost of the insurance.
The Web site charges a fee of $16 for the entire purchase.
3. That's not per ticket so we don't multiply it.
If we add those three figures up from steps 1, 2 and 3, we just put plus
signs between them, like this
$167x + $19x + $16
4. The family is charged a total of $1132.
So we just set that equal to $1132 like this:
$167x + $19x + $16 = $1132
We drop the dollar marks for convenience:
167x + 19x + 16 = 1132
186x + 16 = 1132
186x = 1116
x = 6
So they bought 6 tickets.
Edwin
